Interview With A Scientist
by Tattooed Wings
Summary: "You think I'm a criminal, and I guess I am, that's why I'm here...I've done things I regret myself. But what I regret the most is getting caught." Jeb gets interviewed by a local writer. You've heard the Flock's story now you're hearing Jeb's story.


"**I don't regret my past, I just regret the time I've wasted with the wrong people."**

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><p>He walked into the prison. It was cold and reeked of hurt and trouble. The walls were bleak with nothing but a poor coat of a yellowish white covering the rough bricks. Thick steel bars were covering anything made of glass, windows, doors, anything and everything. Guards were stationed everywhere, supposedly intimidating, but they were too bored to do anything but add to the sadness lingering in the air.<p>

He didn't wear a suit today, it didn't seem right to shove his freedom in their faces, but he also wasn't in bright orange jumpsuits. He easily walked up to the security desk and smiled warmly at the security man behind the desk. The man didn't return the smile; he just raised an eyebrow and glared at him. "Can I help you?" He asked in a gruff voice and a steely look.

The man didn't miss a step, "I'm Marcus, the reporter." The security man just scoffed and waved a hand, motioning him through. Nothing could ruin his mood today, he's been after this case since he was put into prison twenty years ago.

Two security guards walked him through white halls and past cells until they stopped in front of a large steel door. One took out a card and slid it on the verifier. The small red dot flashed green and the security guards opened it. There was a man, he looked too young to be working here, leaning back in a chair sipping coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.

"Morning Steve," The guard next to him said and the boy sitting in the chair nodded, eyes glued to the screen in front of him.

"Morning Joseph," The boy, Steve, replied, taking a cautious sip from his cup.

They exchanged a few more words before they actually let him into the room. One guard, Joseph, gave him a hard look before letting him into the small interrogation room.

"Don't let him fool you, Marcus, you seem bright, don't let him get into your head. He's not a good person." Marcus just nodded; eyeing the door blocking him from seeing the man slumped in a chair in the middle of the gray room. Joseph sighed and opened the door, "Careful." Another polite nod and he was in. He stared at the figure's back before walking calmly to the other seat.

The man made no movement acknowledging Marcus's presence. He eyed his lazily and sat up a little straighter, "What'd I do?" He asked in a rough voice.

Marcus smiled easily, "Nothing, I'm here to hear your story."

The man barked bitterly and closed his eyes for a second, "The story that landed me in a frozen hell?"

Marcus nodded a little, "That one," He said silently.

Jeb sat straighter and leaned onto the table as far as his restraints would let him. "You think I'm a criminal." It wasn't a question; it was a statement, a fact in Jeb's mind.

Marcus hesitated, choosing his words carefully, "It's what you are."

Jeb shook his head and laughed roughly before looking up at Marcus, "You have kids, Marcus?"

Marcus raised an eyebrow at him and nodded, "Two daughters and a son." He could practically feel the anger rolling off the security guards behind the one-way window.

Jeb nodded as if he already knew this and was just verifying his thoughts. "Then you'll understand better." Marcus was confused but nodded, listen now, and ask questions later.

"Have you ever dreamt of the impossible?" He asked, meeting Marcus's eye.

Marcus shook his head a little and Jeb sighed, "Then it might be harder, it's always easier when you've felt the same way at a certain point in history." Marcus nodded a little, understanding why Jeb asked. He didn't want to be judged, just like every other person in the world.

"You think I'm a criminal, and I guess I am, that's why I'm here. I've killed people, I'm a murderer, and I've done things that I regret myself. But what I regret most is getting caught. You would think that by now I would finally realize that what I did was wrong, but it was right at the same time. We made kids fly, we made babies wolves, and we genetically enhanced humans. It was beautiful. But everything good has its flaws. Now I see that we had one too many. But it was still beautiful.

"My daughter was one of the experiments and she wasn't a failure. That made our company fly high, we had finally done something right." He sighed and shook his head. He looked at the blank wall behind Marcus's head and another sigh escaped his lips.

"My son…" His voice caught and his eyes were filled with sadness. "I left with my daughter, Max, she named herself, and my son was left behind. I left with good intentions; I thought that they would take care of him for me. But I had left him with crazed scientists, just wanting another success. I came back two years later and he hated me, he was different. My seven year old son looked like a twenty five year old model that could turn into a killer beast. I watched him train, waiting for the time to kill those who stole me away." He took a deep sigh and rubbed his eyes, "You should've seen his eyes, those innocent blue eyes that used to sparkle with happiness held the dark, coldness of a killer. Because that's what he was. A _killer_." The word burned like acid in his mouth. He closed his eyes, reminiscing to his free days. It all seemed to amazing then, but now it hurt like rubbing salt into a fresh wound.

"My boy should be in second grade right now, but because of me he's buried six feet under. He should've lived a full life up to the age of ninety, but instead he lived up to the age of eight."

Marcus nodded slightly, shifting in his chair, lifting his leg and resting it on his other. He leaned in closer to the man and waited for more, hanging on every one of Jeb's words. "How did it all start?" Marcus asked after a moment of silence.

Jeb let out a breath before starting again, "It started off as an innocent dream, a dream that turned into a nightmare for everyone. My friends who only worried about school and girls started forgetting their girlfriends and began failing college exams. They became obsessed. And then they secretly asked me to answer one of the problems that they couldn't solve. I thought that they were finally trying at school and easily solved it. Then they somehow persuaded me to help them. We all dropped out of college with a horribly beautiful dream. We found a company, a secret company hidden in a bigger one and wouldn't stop putting in applications until they finally hired us. Then we started getting bigger jobs and needed more people to be willing lab rats. I then met Celia Hart. She was amazing, the sun in my life…" His eyes showed the pain and happiness of this story. His story, it brought tears to every bodies eyes, even the strongest, the most tough guy in the world would even cry.

"We got married and my friends almost got me to inject her with out latest project: the eraser. Half-man half-wolf. _Almost_. But then I came home, injection hidden in my jacket arm, I looked into her eyes, so trusting, and threw it away. They were mad at me for weeks, months even, but then she went to the doctor. She came home crying. She had a tumor in her spine; she had two months to live. In one month she died. The doctors were wrong and I hated them for it. I lashed out and sent the newest batch of erasers to kill them. They killed them but my hands were the ones that got dirty, I was the one left with that painful regret that makes your stomach turn and makes you starve until you say something. That's how I met Valencia, an amazing woman. She understood easily and then the boys found out about her. They didn't come to me this time, they took matters into their own hand and convinced her to donate her genes for science. Then they used some of mine and suddenly there's Max, the newest accomplishment." He shook his head and pressed his index finger and thumb into the bridge of his nose.

"You know how hard it is to watch your daughter grow up being tortured to tears, seeing them seconds away from death but their fighting it?" His voice was hard, his eyes a blazing storm. "I set her free and chaos struck yet again. No matter what I did terror was just around the corner. I did something good and I hurt someone else. I killed innocent kids and I don't want your sympathy, I want you to understand. Understand that everything I did finally piled too high and it all toppled down on me. Understand that my daughter hates me and my son died hating me. Understand that what I did may have been beautiful at times, but all the other times, that most times everything ended up dying before they could make it past the age of infancy, most of them ended up ugly failures. I watched my work die and made more innocent families cry because their child went missing and not even the doctors could tell them what happened because they helped us. They would rather get paid then see happy families." He shook his head in disgust.

Marcus was appalled. Everyone that's heard of Jeb Batchelder has only heard of his bad, but no one has ever heard his story. They heard that he stole innocent children and killed innocent people for his own personal gain. He was a hard-core criminal. But this Jeb was soft and lonely, he was a wounded solider from the other side. He was a man that made a mistake. Sometimes it's not about the cover or the summary, it's about the story written by them themselves.

Marcus nodded and quickly wrote down what he just heard. This was gold, exactly what everyone wasn't expecting. Sure, it'd cause riot, but that's just what the truth does. No one likes the truth; they all prefer lies that make more sense that fit their lives.

"The last I heard about Max was that she's living happily with the Flock, her adopted family from the School, our lab, and has finally accepted Dylan." He made a face and shook his head, "I'm honestly disappointed in her. Out of all the things that she listened to me for, I really wish that she had chosen this for herself." He smiled suddenly, his teeth as white as a ghost, as white as can be. Too white.

"I remember… we made a clone of her and they were battling. I told her there could only be one Max and she was winning. Max 2 was on the brink of death and then… she stands up, dropping Max 2 on the floor, gasping for breath. She yelled at us, called us out and everything she said was true. It was all true, and we ignored her. Secretly I thought about all the insults she threw, finally understanding where I had went wrong, where my life finally started spiraling out of control. I swore that day that I would do anything to make sure that she lived. I would make sure she would never have to dumpers dive again."

Marcus looked up, shocked and nodded, telling him to go on. "Let me tell you a secret," Jeb breathed, leaning forward, smiling and showing his oddly clean teeth. Marcus nodded, "I sent you those files. I sent you all the evidence you needed to get rid of us." Marcus's draw dropped and he gaped openly at Jeb.

"B-b-b-but you worked for them!"

Jeb nodded grimly, "I needed them to see their ways, I needed them to understand what they did wrong I needed them to become sane again, because if you look closely at their eyes, you'll see the crazed happiness buried deep within." He shook his head slightly, "Even once in mine, there was a horrible bloodlust in my eyes. I looked like the erasers, ready to kill and I wanted to kill. I never wanted to see that again…so I sent you everything you needed."

Marcus shook his head and blinked, once, twice, and again. "I went crazy with the need to experiment, to see what would happen next." His voice was quieter than the wind whispering in the trees.

"But I'm still a criminal. I'll always be because even change can't alter the past; I will always be the crazy scientist no matter how far I run from it."

Marcus nodded and suddenly the door opened. Joseph's lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes hard and blocked, "Times up."

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><p>Marcus published Jeb's story and a week after there was a break in the prison, the unbreakable prison broke. He got a call the day after the story of the break in happened demanding he go to the prison immediately.<p>

Once there he was escorted straight to Jeb's empty cell where only a cot, a sink, a toilet hole, and a small piece of paper remained. Marcus walked into the small cell with Joseph and picked up the paper. Joseph cringed his nose in disgust as Marcus read it aloud:

_You can't run from your past because sooner or later it's going to come back to get you. Looks like mine came just a bit too soon. What are you running from Marcus? Don't hide because you're bound to be found sooner or later._

_Jeb_

Marcus ran a hand through his shaggy hair and reread the note a couple hundred times. There were too many meanings in this note that Marcus couldn't decide which one was for him. He looked up and met Joseph's grim eyes, "He actually did it…" His voice held awe and admiration as he stared into space. _My, my, my…he did it._

Joseph scoffed and rolled his eyes, "Probably killed by an old enemy, knowing Jeb, most likely his daughter."

Marcus nodded dully, inside thinking of all the ways that Jeb could've escaped. _I sent you everything you needed…_ But that never meant he wanted to be here. He wanted them here. Somewhere, deep down, Marcus knew that Jeb wasn't dead, he knew that he was off, out in the world somewhere, living life free. He laughed hysterically and shook his head. "Jeb's a bird. You can cage him for as long as you want, but he will ram himself at the bars over and over again. Sooner or later he will break free and it will no longer be caged because nothing is forever." Joseph shook his head and escorted Marcus out.

Marcus walked home that night, staring at the sky, basking in its beauty when Jeb's voice rung out. "I'm not the bird, Marcus, because I'm still not free, but I guess a criminal never will be." He turned on his heel and stared into the face of a wanted man. _Jeb's a bird._

"You never left."

Jeb smiled. "That's the beauty of it. They saw an empty cell and jumped, they never thought for a second that I could still be in there. You were my escape."

Marcus marveled at his brilliance and sighed, "I supposed I should call the police."

Jeb laughed sadly and nodded, "I suppose." Deep down he knew Marcus wouldn't call, he heard it in his voice earlier.

"You're not a criminal, Jeb, you're a man who made a mistake, a human," Marcus said quietly shaking his head. "I never saw you today, I walked home and sat down with my family at the dinner table like I do every night. I never had this conversation because you were long gone." And with that he walked away, he turned his back on the criminal and stuffed his hands in his pockets, whistling a slow, leisure tune as he walked home. He never looked back, but he guessed that Jeb walked away, he must've he's not stupid.

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><p>But he never did see Jeb again, he heard stories about the missing scientist traveling the world, walking around like a ghost, never seen and never leaving any trails, but still there. His article was a hit and many people didn't believe it, but it spun stories in their heads, it entertained them for a while before they moved on to something better. Marcus looked but never found Jeb, he looked to the sky's and could've sworn he saw six gigantic birds flying overhead, but he juts shook his head and walked on.<p>

Jeb was a bird who flew to safety and never again touched the unstable place we call home.

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><p><strong>AN: This is an English assignment. My teacher said to write a short story on something you feel deeply about. I don't feel to deeply about this but I do feel very deeply about MR so I wrote about this. R&R tell me what you think :)**

**Dream Beyond Infinity**

**"The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage."  
><strong>


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